random thoughts from a wanderer

Links I liked this week

Here are some weekly links that gave me some things to ponder (except the last one… that one I just think is funny). No I don’t agree with everything in these posts and be warned some of these may contain content that some could find offensive.

“The fatal error that most of the white American church makes is to detach God’s wrath from his solidarity with the oppressed as though humanity’s sin is an abstract offense against God’s honor that has nothing to do with the harm it causes to other people.”

“Without adequate government support, the mass influx of asylum seekers to Athens created a slum where its labyrinth of streets bring together a precarious mix of ethnic rivals, foreign illnesses and abject poverty. With few or no alternatives for refugees whose money and patience has run out, these unfavorable conditions breed another layer of destruction: survival prostitution.

“There is no “thou shalt not have floral arrangements during a bombing” rule because people aren’t going to just throw out their nice things, their furnishings, and so forth, when the bombing starts.It’s not as though Aleppo was a post-apocalyptic war zone before the war…

Many areas of the world, including the Middle East, have thriving cities with advanced economies, high rises, and everything you’d expect to see in a modern city…

There is a lot Americans have to learn by studying the world around them more broadly. Many Americans have little more than a cursory knowledge of the world outside of the U.S. I would argue that we Americans have an added duty to learn about the world outside our borders, given the impact U.S. policy frequently has on other countries. “

“More and more young people have come to view church as a hostile environment, one which demands their assimilation and interprets questions as insubordination.

Is it any wonder why so many people have carved out havens for themselves on college campuses, far away from Christianity’s judgmental eyes? If believers hope to impact the next generation in any meaningful way, we need to acknowledge who they are and meet one another with grace…

…people seeking safe spaces are not “entitled brats” seeking comfort, they’re men and women searching for genuine community. If we can’t offer that, then what business do we have calling ourselves the Church?”

“Men in these denominations and churches can see exactly what it’s like to have no power. They’re not idiots. They think they know exactly what will happen if they put themselves under that same authority they demand over others. They won’t willingly endure what they have demanded of their followers for so long, and in their world…

Make no mistake here, though:

History Continues to Repeat Itself Until the Lesson is Learned…

That’s why you don’t see these kinds of scandals coming out of churches with women in power, churches that don’t enshrine men as the sole group to wield power or have the capacity to speak…

These scandals aren’t an aberration of the system. They are a direct result of the system and part of its architecture.”